Standard-Speaker
HAZLETON, Pa. — The story of how acting Hazleton Police Chief Jerry Speziale infiltrated Colombian drug cartels and smuggled cocaine into the United States could become a television series.
Sentinel Pictures announced plans to produce a one-hour pilot for a series tentatively titled “Without a Badge.”
Speziale learned to become an undercover drug officer as a member of the New York Police Department.
When Speziale went on loan to a task force of the federal Drug Enforcement Administration in the 1990s, he cultivated ties with an informant, Paul Lir Alexander, who taught him how to sting the cartels.
Speziale told his story in a book also called “Without a Badge” that he co-wrote with Mark Seal in 2003.
The book’s settings move from New York to Latin American cities and jungle air strips. There are wiretaps, car crashes and encounters with drug lords.
There’s also a betrayal for which Alexander went to prison. He escaped from custody in Brazil in 2010 and remains at large.
After Speziale wrote the book, he sold the film rights but was told that his story might take a decade to reach the screen.
“David Permut never gave up,” Speziale said of the man producing the pilot with Sentinel and Dark Trick Films, the production company of actor Ryan Reynolds.
They hired Matthew Cirulnick to write the scripts.
“I’ve dealt with a lot of writers. This guy really knocked it out of the park,” Speziale said.
He said they have mapped out plans for extending the show through three seasons.
They are making the pilot through NBC Universal, which allows them to offer the finished product to other networks and outlets.
“It gives it more flexibility of where it will actually air,” Speziale said.
After retiring from the New York Police Department, Speziale was elected sheriff of Passaic County, New Jersey. He worked for the New York-New Jersey Port Authority Police, served as police chief in Prichard, Alabama and police director in Paterson, New Jersey, a job he continues to hold while acting as Hazleton’s interim police chief.
Also, Speziale played a police captain in a 2009 movie, “Brooklyn’s Finest.”
Copyright 2016 the Standard-Speaker